L’Alibi (1937) - film review

Whilst performing his famous mind-reading act at a Parisian nightclub, Professor Winckler recognises his most hated enemy in the audience.  After the show, he pursues the man, an American gangster named Gordon, and shoots him dead.  He then bribes Hélène, a young woman who works in the nightclub, to give him an alibi for the killing.   Certain of Winckler’s guilt, Commissioner Calas contrives a scheme to destroy his alibi.  Suspicion is thrown on a young man André Laurent who has succeeded in winning Hélène’s affection.   How will Hélène react when she realises Laurent is in fact Calas’s colleague?

L’Alibi is one of two very popular film noir thrillers made by the French film director Pierre Chenal in the 1930s.  The other, Le Dernier tournant (1939), was the first film adaptation of the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice.  From a stylistic point of view, both films are rather good examples of early film noir.  Deep focus, high contrast black-and-white photography, confined shadowy sets – all the familiar noir techniques are used to create a sense of mystery, menace and mayhem.

Where L’Alibi falls down is its weak script.  The characters are simplistic caricatures, and the plot lacks originality and depth.  The silly happy ending tagged on at the end of the film jars painfully with the sombre mood which preceded it.  On the plus side, there is a great cast which includes some of the most celebrated screen actors of the 1930s – Louis Jouvet, Erich von Stroheim, Albert Préjean and Jany Holt.   Jouvet is particularly memorable as a tenacious cop who seems prepared to sacrifice any principles to get his man – the kind of dark, morally ambiguous role which the actor plays so well.

© James Travers 2007


One of the many things I love about French cinema is the wealth of what we in England call Second Eleven directors.  In the case of French cinema, these would generally be directors whose work, excellent though it may be, is confined to the salles of France rather than the screens of England and the USA.  I'm thinking of names like Albert Valentin, Louis Daquin and others of that ilk.  Pierre Chenal was one of the best of the bunch.  

As a matter of fact, Chenal did at least achieve an English screening of one of his films, Clochemerle (1948), but that was probably as much for the storyline (the building of a public urinal in the town centre, something the English would have found risqué in the extreme) as for any other virtue it may have had.  As it happened, he made several decent films, not least La Foire aux chimères (1946) and L'Assassin connaît la musique (1963). 

L'Alibi wasn't bad either.  Here, Chenal was working with top-of-the-line talent in the shape of Louis Jouvet who, for a man of the theatre (as he preferred to describe himself), made more than his share of great movies.  Also on hand was the equally fascinating Erich von Stroheim, who made more films as an actor in France than he did in Hollywood, although the average filmgoer would be hard put to see past La Grande illusion (1937).  He was especially brilliant in Christian-Jaque's Les Disparus de St. Agil (1938), where for once he played a totally sympathetic character.  

In L'Alibi, Von Stroheim plays a nightclub entertainer with a mind-reading act who overreacts when an old enemy shows up, so much so that the said enemy winds up wondering who's got the oxygen concession.  Having calmed down, Von Stroheim persuades a lowly employee at the nightclub to furnish him with an alibi for murder.  After that, it's just a case of when Jouvet will trap him.  With two maestri like these on set, Albert Préjean must have wondered why he was required, other than to make up the numbers.  Far from a masterpiece but way, way above the commonplace.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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